We finally made the decision to euthanize Sunny today. This is the hen that has been having problems with laying internally. We found her walking around absolutely COVERED in egg. She looked really irritated, and had been pulling the egg laden feathers out. Her abdomen was grossly distended, and she seemed rather listless. We had a vet appointment for our dog today, so we took her in with us. She was given a shot of pink fluid into her abdomen, and she peacefully passed within about 3 minutes.

I did a post-mortem, and found a few internal problems. I found a tennis ball sized organ/tumour. Mom seems to think that it is her stomach? It was rock hard. We opened it up and found what looked like really old food, and little cubic glass-like things inside. We have no idea what they are. We do have bits of broken glass on our property, as it used to be a car graveyard. The only fact that defies that these are pieces of glass, is that they are all perfectly cubic. They are not sharp, and the edges are rounded off.

First Opening...

All of the way open...

The inside of the organ/tumour...

On the bottom of this picture, you can see the healthy layer of fat, and right above it one can see a veined, golfball sized organ. This is a part of her reproductive system.

I removed it. Here is a clearer pic of it.

Here is a shot of the whole ovary. I don't know much about this, but it seems abnormally large to me.

Here are a few shots of abdominal cavity, showing the liver, small intestine, large intestine, and many of the yolks.

So that's it. I drove her out to the middle of no where and layed her to rest. Her full name was Sunny Side Up. She was one of my original 6, of which only three remain. RIP Darling.

That first pic you're calling an organ/tumor is the gizzard. Looks normal to me. You normally clean out all that gunk, rinse and coat the gizzard in flour, fry and UUMMM uuummm good! So, you're no closer to finding out what was wrong w/the poor girl...

The first pic is the gizzard and looks perfectly normal to me and in a healthy color. It is normally hard and has lots of rocks and hard things including and not limited to random glass, screws, and loose bolts they may pick up. (we eat the gizzards here)

As for the reproductive tract, does look kind of long and extended, but what you're holding is the ovaduct and is normally kind of "bunched up" in the hen so might not be too abnormally large. The lump you are holding looks like the next egg on it's way down the tract with a bit of albumen forming on it which gives it the size. Nothing from the insides strikes me as that bad really, even the liver looks pretty good, (another organ meat that we eat) but obviously something was wrong with the girl for her to be under the weather and leaking yolk. The ovaries looked pretty good to (the yellow grape like yolks) and looked to be still producing pretty well as they still look pretty vascularized and hadn't dropped.

The internal layer I had, when I opened up her insides, had fluid build up that had smushed her intestines into a clump on the dorsal side of her abdomen. She had dropped yolks that "flowed" out of her which were not connected to the ovaries anymore. But every case is a bit different. At least we know the hen is no longer suffering.

That first pic was her gizzard, it looked very normal....that was one of the best parts my mom loved floured up and fried...They always have bits and pieces of finely grounded up sand or rocks...that helped in her digestion...

If the glass was from car windows then it may have been safety glass, which shatters in cube like pieces. Then if she swallowed them as 'grit' and they rolled around in there gridning up food for a while, that would explain the even smoother edges.

The part with the developing yolks is actually the ovary, it looks normal. Just because it looks normal, doesn't mean that it was normal. In the future you can submit the body for a necropsy, and they might give you better answers.

Was there any fluid that came out when you opened her up? That would be abnormal and cause swelling. Otherwise it could be fat you were feeling, that was a lot of fat.